Q. Dear Julia, I have lived in Chelsea for over 40 years. I met my wife there 25 years ago and we have both enjoyed our lives there. Every day I am in comfortable familiar surroundings with people I know and who know me. Everything I love is nearby and I have all of London and things to do on my doorstep. Increasingly, though, my wife has wished to move to the country, so we have rented a house in the Cotswolds. I am so homesick. I have told my wife how I feel. It’s upset her as she says the house in the country is her dream, but that me feeling depressed is making her depressed. She says that we can move back to Chelsea to our small gardenless flat, but I can see that she doesn’t want to move back. On the outside I am pretending that I like it here to make her happy, but inside I am dying. What do you advise, please?
A. This question is important — so thank you for having the courage to ask it. I infer from your tone that being open in this way is unfamiliar for you. I understand how living in Chelsea is in your bones, giving you that grounded sense of safety and belonging, surrounded by friends and familiarity, and opportunities “to do things” in all of London.
It is common for couples to want to live in different places. This difference can emerge at any point in the relationship. I want to broaden your question because it is actually a question about how to manage conflict.
Every couple faces questions like yours. There are small dilemmas: whose turn is it to cook? Who is picking up the children after school? And then there are big dilemmas: where does the money come from? Who will earn what? Where does the money go? How are decisions about spending made? Where will we educate our children? And, of course, where shall we live?
As a couple who have lived together for 25 years, I’d like to know if you see this question of London v country as an all-or-nothing problem. I want to ask whether you have found ways of managing divergent views in other domains of your life that have worked for you both. If you have, you could bring that experience to this question. Or have you both tended to be conflict-avoidant? And now that a big conflict has arisen, you feel stuck. Inside, you’re “dying” — but you can’t talk to your wife openly about your feelings. Now is the time to try.
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In a relationship, how we communicate and manage these contentious issues matters. When we feel heard with compassion and empathy, when we feel understood, we can compromise. Being able to tell each other all that you’re feeling, thinking, listening to all your wife desires, and bringing your dreams out of the dark opens a space for compromise. Most importantly, it allows for your differences. Learning to live with differences as a couple can mean that you find a path to compromise. It unlocks the fixed right v wrong attitude.
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Similarly, learning to disagree productively — recognising that where we love most is where we hate most and fight hardest — is part of being in a relationship. Fighting and learning to repair after a fight is a skill that can be acquired. The big and little fights in daily life, the rupture and repair, are like muscles we can build. When we trust that we can deal with minor conflicts, we have a psychological map and the capacity to deal with big ones.
If couples don’t fight productively, “suffering in silence”, shutting down and withdrawing can result in an accumulative build-up of anger, resentment and tension. Though I may be wrong, your question hints at an unproductive mode of fighting, one which may eventually result in an all-or-nothing response — pressing the nuclear button, an explosion — and the relationship breaking down.
But you seem to want the relationship to continue and wish to resolve being at loggerheads with each other. To achieve this, it would help if you practised allowing difference and fighting productively. I suggest that you see a couples therapist. This would enable you to explore your visions of your life together. Deepening your understanding may allow you to find a compromise.
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From a pragmatic perspective, I encourage you to see that if your relationship breaks down, your flat in Chelsea will likely have to be sold. There will be multiple deep and painful losses. I would ask you both to consider how you could compromise. Consider buying a smaller flat and renting the house in the country. Nowadays, there is a version of couples called LAT (living apart together), in which the couple live in two places, sometimes together, sometimes apart. Married life does not always require communal living arrangements. It can be flexible, with the relationship remaining committed.
Compromise is your only answer. How you get there is in the gift of you both. There are so many aspects of life that we have no control over. In this one, you do have control and agency. Use it. Only you and your wife can resolve this dilemma and to do so you have to want to be together more than you want to get your own way.
